Megazone 23 - Part 1 - With Series Box and Mouse Pad

Starring:Masato Kubota, Maria Kawamura, MÃ®na Tominaga, Mayumi ShÃ´, Kaneto Shiozawa, Hitoshi Takagi, Kiyoshi Kobayashi, YÃ»ji Mitsuya, Katsumi Toriumi, Kazuyuki Sogabe, Daisuke GÃ´ri, Ikuya Sawaki, Hisashi Katsuda, KÃ´ichi Yamadera, Hiromi Yokoi, IchirÃ´ Itano, Yoshio Kawai, Maya Okamoto, Nobuo Tobita, Akira Tomita
Director: Matt Greenfield, Noboru Ishiguro
Studio: Adv Films
Product Type: DVD

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Originally released in 1985, Megazone 23 (a.k.a. The Robotech Movie) was one of the earliest anime features. Daredevil biker Shogo Yahagi is always getting into scrapes and asking his friends to bail him out. He's drawn into a deadly governmental cover-up when he borrows the Garland, a top-secret motorcycle that turns into a battle robot. Pursued by B.D., the evil mastermind of the conspiracy, Shogo learns that the Earth was destroyed 500 years ago: humanity has actually been living in an enormous spaceship, Megazone 23, run by the supercomputer Bahamoud. The characters behave improbably, at best. In the midst of these life-and-death intrigues, Shogo finds the time to begin a romance with Yui and to appear with her in an amateur film. He waits until B.D. is about crack a vital computer code to go to bed with Yui--and talk about the developing crisis. Megazone 23 was the first installment of a three-part series, and it ends on a real cliffhanger. The artists were clearly learning their craft when they made the film: the motorcycle chases lack the skillful cutting and dramatic camera angles that would characterize later features. Unrated, but cartoon violence and sex are unsuitable for children. --Charles Solomon

Customer Reviews:

A classic Anime , hope you lower the price.......2007-06-29

I had the opportunity of watching this anime about seven years ago in VHS, about one week ago , I saw it on DVD and wow !!! it was really a good experience to see it again. It is a shame that the story seems somewhat incomplete we never get the opportunity to see Megazone 23's enemies and there is no conclusion to the BD problem..is he evil or not?, what is he tryint to do? , there is a sex scene here, and also a love story inside the movie. I hope someday , a director tries to improve the story and the characters in an updated version of Megazone 23, it is truly a classic.

The animation is good overall , considering that it was 1986 when this anime was released.

Megazone 23...the original (SPOILERS).......2007-02-17

Well, I paid $21.99 for this DVD, was it worth the price?

Not really.

I will show the greatness of MZ 23, and then it's drawbacks.

MZ's greatness- The story is original.

The Garland mech is sweet, and an innovative design overall.

Eve was/is a cool digital pop idol before Sharon Apple even hit the radar.

Mikimoto's art is sublime (in an 80's kind of way)...

MZ's drawbacks- It is sooo 1980s. I mean, in a painful way. But not as 1980s a Part II, ick.

It drags on, and on, and on...with next to no action.

The ending is well, not an ending. It makes you think Shogo is running, severely injured, trying to reunite with Yui, but Part II proves that assumption dead in the water.

It has nudity, which is tastefully done I might add, but it might be a drawback for some.

If you can snag it for $15 or under it is a solid buy for the retro 80's effect. But at what I paid, um not a good value.

Great Potential.......2006-02-19

The excellent story line in this anime could have led to a classic in the Sci-Fi Anime genre, however, the ending left me saying, "Huh?"

It's not a cliff hanger ending either, just a bit of a thud... reminiscent of the animated Lord of the Rings ending. Remember that one? :-)

I love the visuals, though most of the animation is unpolished by todays anime standards.

GOOFBALL VIDEO.......2004-07-08

Well, as lamebrained mishmashes of conflicted, cluttered, and uninnovative anime go, I guess Megazone 23 takes the cake, and the pan it sits on, and the oven it was baked in. Just barely lying under the surface, this story of superficiality and illusion, is an analogy to itself.

Well, let's start at the beginning. Shogo Yahagi is an 18 year old McDonald's employee who, as is standard, rides a motorcycle and is a juvenile delinquent in disguise. One of his friends invites him to see a very futuristic looking bike that he says was "borrowed" from the company he works for. Right then, some x-files looking agents show up with guns demanding the bike back. In the confusion, Shogo's friend (or just acquaintance?) is killed and Shogo takes off on the bike, soon learning that it can transform into a battle-primed mecha (which he seems to pilot expertly with no training). He soon goes on to use it for his own purposes, like spying on a girl he's interested in, and killing innocent people as he drives down the street with no regard for pedestrians. By coencidental circumstances (by that I mean stopping in a tunnel), Shogo learns that the world he lives in is an artificial world inside a spaceship controlled by a super computer, which is being approached by a UFO, and is currently under danger of being taken over by military subversives.

I thought America was the only one that suffered from the 80's: bad music, bad hair, bad clothes. Yet here we are in Megazone with all the sorry disco-like music and bufont hair. Especially in Flashdance like sequences where a girl dances in spandex and legwarmers. The plot of this story never added up. I mean, for 500 years, this whole population has been living in a spaceship without noticing, and then this guy just takes a wrong turn in a tunnel and finds out the secret. I mean where was all the food coming from? Where were the dead buried? Didn't anyone, like in the Truman Show, come to the end of the city and run into a wall? None of the characters in this series has a clue. This is only Part 1 so I would think more explanation would be given in the second volume, which by the way, I won't buy. Another goofy sidestory is that Shogo and his girlfriends are making an independent film on the side which has the same story as the dvd. Wow, a mirror within a mirror....of lameness.

The only redeeming ideas here were used later on in Dark City and the Matrix films and Akira. Watch any of those films instead of wasting time and money on this dvd.

Features a commentary and production sketches.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, in a scene of Megazone, the mecha are told to use their light sabers, which yes, are exactly like those of Star Wars, even with the "wowwww, woowww" sound effects. Also, Shogo's bike sounds suspiciously like the Millenium Falcon as it runs. Awful.

Megazone 23: Back With A Vengeance...!!!.......2004-06-19

Well, I just bought, and watched, my copy of this CLASSIC "Japanamation" (which, for those to young to remember the 80's, is what we use to call "Anime" back in the 80's) OVA (which stands for, Original Video Animation, which meant anything that was animated to go straight to video, and not for play on Japanese TV, as most anime was made for, and you thought that you weren't gonna learn anything, by reading this review... lol) MEGAZONE 23, and am QUITE relieved that the new English dub for this new release, isn't ANYWHERE as BAD, as the past reviewers have said that it was.

Sure, most fans of this title, have grown up with the older Streamline Pictures, English dub, which is a nice dub, except for the fact that the three main girls in the story, all sound like sophisticated ladies, and NOT the young adults that they are actually suppose to be, where as in this new version, the dubbing team has opted for voices that closer mirror the attitudes of the young ladies, which is also nice (my suggestion is that you try and acquire BOTH versions of this anime, so that you can decide for yourself as to which dub you prefer).

Another plus, is the audio commentary (which you should definitely listen to AFTER watching the show if you are new to this title, as there be spoilers afoot, me lads :) which, although, tends to spend more then half of it's time, with the three speakers reminiscing about their old Laser Disc anime collections, does get into some pretty funny good natured kidding about the show itself (i.e. how room items seem to change from scene to scene) and some interesting anecdotal tidbits about the show as well.

The story is shear 80?s, sci-fi-mecha-transformation-actioner, and if you like Macross (or Robotech, as it is widely known here) then you?ll LOVE this, as it?s BIGGER and BADDER, with a nice story.

One thing to take into consideration when watching this though, is he fact that this is part 1 of a 3 part story (actually, really only a 2 part story, as the next part, part 2, really ends the story, where as part 3 is more of an add on to try and cash in on the Akira phenomenon, and, although it has it?s merit, is pretty much a different story) and so, doesn?t have a proper ending, as such, leaving the door WAY open for part 2. So, keep this in mind, as ALL questions WILL be nicely answered, in part 2.

All in all, a nice job was done on this title, and is definitely worth the mula (and for the novice animer out there, this is a title NOT to be missed, trust me ;)

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